Wednesday, 17 September 2014

In Defense of the Tiger!

I have taken to my keyboard in
dudgeon, nay – I would go so far as to say - high dudgeon! I get irritated by
the number of throwaway comments that litter the wargaming forums denigrating
the employment of Tigers on the games table. Is it just me, or have I noticed
an increase in interweb chit chat dissing Tigers? Am I imagining the derisive
snorts from grognards whenever my model Tigers come out? Surely you’ve all seen
the digs on the forums, suggesting the Tiger is over-represented on the
wargames table:

Probably
like WW2 gamers and Tiger tanks, more than ever existed in any one battle…

Or, more generally, but still hard to
pin down exactly what the objection is:

Overrated:
Any tank named after a cat.

The first problem is, what is it
exactly these grognards and keyboard toughs are criticising the Tiger fan for?
Playing with cool models? Playing with uncool models? Surely no toy soldier or
model is inherently more ‘childish’ than any other! Stacking the odds unfairly?
Well, much as I dislike them, any points system worth its salt will take care
of that. Lets have a look at some rules systems that compare the
points value of the Tiger against, the most likely alternative, the Pz IV. Unsurprisingly perhaps, there is a spectrum of opinion on the value of the Tiger versus the PzIV. WRG rates the TIger at 144 points and the Pz IV at 104. Firefly has the Tiger worth 370 compared with the PzIV at 255. BattleGroup Kursk sees the inherent advantages of the TIger, which it costs at 74 points compared to the Pz IV at almost half the value - 44 points. Flames of War rates the TIger even higher over the Pz IV - 215 points to 90!

PzIV - was the Tiger worth 2 of these?

Better yet, in my view, a historically balanced
scenario should take account of such an AFV’s battlefield superiority against
lighter vehicles…As a rule of thumb, when designing a generic scenario I tend
to pit a company of T-34s or Shermans against a platoon of Tigers, as was
required at the time, and invite the players to choose sides.

No, I think our critics are adopting an air
of world weary sophistication. Tigers are so
last century! Every noob plays Tigers! Fielding Tigers for German armoured
units is predictable, jejune, and, it’s implied, somehow unhistorical, as they
formed a tiny fraction of the German AFV fleet, and what ones they did have
broke down after a few metres. Everyone knows that!

'Bombing Up!'

Its my belief that using Tigers more
often than other panzers at decisive points on the battlefield is actually
historically justified. And in this, unfortunately rather wordy blog post, I
hope to give you, you who I know, deep down, secretly yearns to play with
Tigers, some 88mm calibre steel cored ammunition to justify your ‘immature’ and
‘unhistorical’ army list!

Breakdowns were frequent - but why?

So what is history’s verdict on the
Tiger 1E? Well the first place we turn to is Wiki, and frankly it’s pretty
damning!

It
was over-engineered, using expensive materials and labour intensive production
methods. Only 1,347 were built between August 1942 and August 1944. The Tiger
was prone to certain types of track failures and immobilizations, and limited
in range by its high fuel consumption. It was expensive to maintain, but
generally mechanically reliable. It was also difficult to transport, and
vulnerable to immobilization when mud, ice and snow froze between its
overlapping and interleaved road wheels in winter weather conditions, often
jamming them solid.

It goes on to add that in 1944
production was phased out in favour of the Tiger II – ‘with relief by all
concerned’ it almost implies!

With
over 50 metric tons dead weight, suspension, gearboxes, and other such items
had clearly reached their design limits and breakdowns were frequent.

A
major problem with the Tiger was that it required considerable resources in
terms of manpower and material. This in part was responsible for the low
quantity produced: 1,347 of the Tiger I and 492 of the Tiger II. The German
designs were expensive in terms of time, raw materials and Reichsmarks, the
Tiger I costing over twice as much as a Panzer IV and four times as much as a
StuG III assault gun.

Although
a formidable design, the low number produced, shortages in qualified crew and
the considerable fuel requirement in a context of ever shrinking resources
prevented the Tigers from having a real impact on the war.

The Tiger was feared...

Well does Wiki not have one good word
to say about this icon of WW2 armour, so beloved of teenage wargamers? Perhaps
rather grudgingly, it allows that the Tiger was feared, and:

saw
combat on all German battlefronts. It was usually deployed in independent tank
battalions, which proved to be quite formidable. The Tiger I represented a new
approach that emphasised firepower and armour.

Damning with faint praise, perhaps,
but I think key to attacking the resource issue – there are two aspects
of the Tiger to deal with here, the impact on the rear echelon, and its effect,
when running and fully supplied, at the sharp end. Clearly, no matter how
wasteful and demanding any weapons system is during production and supply,
presumably there is some level of combat impact it might achieve that could
make amends for that cost – sufficient bang for buck. Or Reichsmark.

Did the Tiger deliver?

So let us boil down all this
Tigerphobia into a couple of issues, which we can then attempt to tackle:

·Was the Tiger a
wasteful, inefficient use of resources – would the Germans have been better off
with the further 2,694 Panzer IVs that not producing Tiger Is might have
allowed them to produce? (2,694 being twice the number of Tigers produced.)

·Is putting Tigers
on the tabletop an un-historical over-representation of their involvement or
contribution to the armoured battles of WW2?

Even the most died in the wool Tiger
fan has to admit that the Tiger was expensive and time consuming to produce and
maintain in the field, compared to the sweet running Sherman and
the remarkably efficient T-34. As we see Wiki states that the Tiger cost twice
as much as the Panzer IV. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that cost in
Reichsmarks broadly equates to overall production costs in terms of the war
effort, perhaps a questionable assumption in view of the wacko nature of the
Third Reich’s economy and disjointed war planning, and its ghastly use of slave
labour. (Yes, admiration for the Tiger tank as a weapon system, and the skill
and courage of its crews, does not imply any sympathy or admiration for the
monstrous and evil nature of the Third Reich as a whole.) Then there is the
impact on the railways, the base workshops, the forward repair workshops, quite
possibly all amounting to twice the resource cost of the Panzer IV. So was
there nobody high up in the Third Reich with the experience and clout to see
that producing all these expensive, unreliable Tiger tanks was a huge mistake?
Somebody as wise and knowledgeable as our snorting grognards, but without their
advantages of hindsight?

Colonel-General Heinz Guderian is in
many ways is ‘Mr Panzer’. He was very much the architect, in Germany, of the
entire Blitzkreig doctrine, authored Achtung!
Panzer! and was instrumental in setting up Germany’s armoured force. He took
a ‘hands on’ approach to tank design, in particular with the Panzer IV which so many
armchair experts suggest should have been even more heavily produced instead of
the Tiger. In early 1943, even Hitler realised that AFV production was becoming
chaotic, and so appointed Guderian as Inspector General of all German armoured
forces, with power over all production, training and doctrinal issues around
Germany’s tanks. Guderian’s first concern was to streamline and concentrate
production on what his experience told him were the key war winning AFV’s
available:

The tank figures envisaged…are to be achieved by means of
increased production of Panzer IVs, Panthers and Tigers.[1]

So we are clear what he thought of the
Tiger in terms of its production cost!

By Autumn 1943, the Germans were fighting a defensive
war on interior lines, so that the relative ‘cost’ or impact of logistics bit
less deep. It’s also worth remembering that on the Eastern front at least, by
investing in high maintenance, highly complex AFV’s; in a sense the Germans
were playing to their strengths, with a more highly educated and technically
literate soldiery than the Russians. Its crews felt it was a fair trade off,
and as Dennis Showalter points out, high maintenance need not equate to low reliability,
so long as time is set aside for routine upkeep:

Tiger was not a lady. But she was like a good
woman. If you treated her right, she’d treat you right.[2]

In fact, given sufficient ‘down time’ in
between operations, Tiger had a good record of operational availability. During the early
part of 1943, when the German army was on the offensive, its breakdowns were
caused more by enemy inflicted minor damage than by mechanical breakdown.
Indeed, a Tiger company was recorded as completing a 65 mile speed march of 10
and a half hours with no breakdowns, a
remarkable feat of endurance and reliability that modern main battle tanks
might envy. And its cross country performance, whilst woefully behind its
modern successors with their hydrogas suspensions, was at least as good as its
contemporary rivals.[3]

To powerful for its own good - rushed from pillar to post without any down time?

What modern scholarship is beginning to reveal
about the myth of those ‘frequent breakdowns’ so gleefully pounced on by its
detractors is that the Tiger was in a sense, victim of its own success. It was
designed as an Army level asset to be committed only at key strategic points,
after suitable preparation and recovery time. Once committed, it had three
primary missions:to lead armoured
attacks against strong positions, break through prepared defensive positions,
and destroy heavy tanks at long ranges.However,
it’s phenomenal impact led to frantic calls for Tigers to come to the rescue everywhere,
and there was reluctance to allow attached units to pull out once they had
stabilised the situation. The culminative impact on mechanical availability led
to its undeserved reputation as unreliable. Even a T-34 would become unreliable
if it was rushed from crisis to crisis and never serviced!

This period of using the Tiger battalions to
crisis manage a collapsing front first started with the withdrawal of
Army Group South from Kursk in Sept 1943. The commanders of the 4 Tiger
battalions responsible for covering the retreat later complained that their
losses were the result of their AFV’s fearsome reputation; they were repeatedly
shunted from crisis to crisis, denied the time for maintenance and to carry out
simple repairs that made the difference between a runner and having to destroy
and abandon an easily repaired vehicle.[4]
Many Tigers were temporarily knocked
out by enemy action and needed repair – particularly with the Soviet tactic of
aiming for the broad target presented by its wide tracks at the frontal aspect.
Guderian certainly warned that care had to be taken to only employ Tigers at
the decisive point, and to subsequently allow time for repair of the inevitable
minor enemy damage that these awesome machines would attract:

The
Tiger unit is the most valuable and strongest weapon in a Panzer Division. If
it is used as the point unit, it will quickly bring localised success because
of its high combat power. However…the Tigers will suffer heavy breakdowns due
to mines, hits and terrain obstacles. Therefore they will enter the decisive
phase of the battle already greatly depleted.

However, his advice was not followed. The 503rd Heavy
Panzer Battalion was ordered to take point for III Panzer Corps’ break-in phase
for Operational Citadel at Kursk on 5 July 43, when 9 of its lead company’s 14
runners were disabled by undetected, carelessly plotted German mines. General
Breith, commander of III Panzer Corps, felt it necessary, throughout the rest
of the war, to continually issue orders that Tigers were to be properly
employed and supported, yet these instructions were regularly disobeyed,
resulting in breakdowns and abandoned Tigers throughout the defensive retreats
that ensued.[5]

I hope we have now properly disposed
of the myth that, after the initial teething period, the Tiger was in any way
mechanically unreliable if properly serviced. Indeed, the likelihood that minor
damage would require time between combats to keep the machines running was not
only anticipated, but operational doctrine adjusted accordingly. The trail of
abandoned Tigers once the retreats started are not testimony to any inherent
mechanical weakness, but to increasing and unforseen, demands placed on this
battle winning tank by desperate troops, vivid testimony to its impact on the
battlefield.

Returning to our two-for-one formula, were the
1347 Tiger Is produced worth the extra 2,694 Panzer IV’s that might

have been
produced instead? Let’s put that equation into context – Pz IV Mark G and H
production, contemporaneous with the Tiger I, amounted to 5461 vehicles. Perhaps
roughly half as many again could have been produced instead of the Tiger.

But
of course, no Tiger – no responses built by the allies -the T-34-85, the IS series, the ISU and SUs,
the M26, the Firefly, the Comet and the Centurion…Just lots and lots more
Shermans and T-34-76s rolling off the lines in Detroit and Tankograd 999. And
with allied production so streamlined, whilst we are approaching ‘angels
dancing on the head of a pin’ territory, I suspect the allied quantitative edge
would have been even more marked had neither side diverted into heavies…

Returning to the issue of how historical it is to feature Tigers on our
tabletop, it is easy to work out the ratio of Tigers to Panzer IVs. Leaving the
Panther out of the equation for now, the 1347 Tiger Is produced represent 20%
of the sum of 6808 Tiger Is and Pz IVs Model G and H produced during the Tiger
production run. Hardly a tiny fraction! Even without the Tiger regularly
starring as a point weapon, either by staff planning or as an emergency ‘fire
brigade’, it is entitled by the maths alone to appear in 1 in 5 of our games!

But in combat, was the Tiger worth the
alternative of those two Panzer IVs it replaced? Well the German high command
certainly thought so….. Let us quote from the briefings given to senior officers
likely to lead Tiger battalions -Training Pamphlet (Merkblatten) 47A/30 For the
employment of The Tiger Heavy Panzer Battalions issued on 20th May
1943:

a.
Purpose, tasks and organisation of the Heavy Panzer Bn.

Its
weapons and armour, in combination with its high manoeuvrability, make the Tiger
the most powerful combat weapon in the armoured forces. The Tiger battalion is
therefore a powerful decisive point weapon…Its strength lies in concentrated,
ruthlessly executed attacks…Tiger battalions are independent units. They will
be attached to other armoured forces at the decisive point in the battle in
order to force a result. They are especially suited to fighting heavy enemy
tank forces and must seek this battle. The destruction of enemy tanks creates
the conditions for our lighter tanks to carry out their allotted tasks
successfully.[6]

But did the formations in the field feel that
a Tiger was worth two Panzer IV’s? It is a commonplace hardly worth arguing
that Tiger units had a major impact wherever they were deployed. Heavy Tank Battalion
503 was assigned to Army Group Don in Dec 42, and withdrawn in late Feb. In those
2 months it accounted for more than 70 Soviet tanks for a combat loss of 3 Tigers.[7]
Similarly the 26 Tigers of the 505th took out 46 of a 50 strong
Soviet Tank Bde of T34s and T70s in just a few minutes on July 6, 1943, on the
Northern sector of Kursk[8].
So highly valued was the Tiger by units
in the field that Guderian had to fend off pleas for small units of Tigers to
be shared out to everyone. Grossdeutschlandin March 1943, after its experiences West of
Kharkov, requested that 3 to 4 Tigers be issued to each Panzer Battalion, as
the Tigers were so useful at breaking up well dug in AT gun positions and
forcing enemy armour to take evasive action. The request got short shrift from
Guderian:

The proposal to issue 3 or 4 Tigers to every panzer battalion is decisively
rejected. The Tiger is a decisive-point weapon within the armoured unit.
Dispersing them into the armoured battalions is an idiotic squandering of this
valuable equipment.[9]

We have seen that
its crew were prepared to put up with its demanding servicing schedule as a
payoff for its protection and firepower. Aggressive tactics were also the
results of picked crews:

…taking risks to a degree indicating they have the utmost
confidence in the vehicle.[10]

Checking out some scratches...Tiger crews were confident in their AFV...

But perhaps the
opinion that matters is that of the Tiger’s opponents. The climactic Battle of
Kursk as the tipping point of the Eastern Front, and the scene of many massive
armoured clashes, is surely familiar to every WW2 wargamer worth his salt. The
Soviet leadership saw the key to breaking the German offensive was dealing with
Tigers. Nikita Khrushchev, a Lt-General Commissar at the front charged with
overseeing the unparalleled defensive preparations, insisted that every soldier
know the weakest points of the Tiger ‘better than the features of his own
children’! When, after the German retreat from Prokhorovka, the Russians
announced victory, their headlines read ‘The
Tigers are Burning!’ The Tiger inspired more fear amongst Russian tankers
than any of the other German panzers:

After the war, various army commanders stated that they talked
about the problem of combating the heavy German tanks, even describing special
directives that were issued about how their tank formations were to fight the Tigers
with their deadly 8.8cm guns. The energy devoted to this problem was out of all
proportion to the actual numbers of tigers available to the panzer divisions
for Operation Citadel. Former Bundeswehr General major Dieter Branddubbed this condition ‘tiger psychosis’.[11]

Soviet First Tank
Army’s commander, Lt-Gen Katukov, was receiving such alarming reports on the
performance of the Tigers to this army’s front, that he obtained permission
from Stalin to postphone the entire Russian Voronezh Front’ s post Kursk
counterattack[12].
And Stalin was not an easy man to present problems to! The Soviet historiography of the Tiger tank
has been affected by the Russian fear of it, leading post war accounts to
repeat the overestimation of the numbers present during Operation Citadel.
Lt-General Rotmistrov’s
accounts of dozens of Tigers being outfought and destroyed by his nimble T-34s,
slavishly followed by later writers, are pure fiction, as comprehensively
demonstrated by recent scholars such as George M Nipe. For example, Soviet
sources claiming the destruction of 70 Tigers in Leibstandarte’s sector on 12th
July are problematic as this Division only had 4 operational Tigers at the
start of the day![13]
The entire II SS Panzer Korps only had 45 Tigers spread between the 3
divisions. These myths have been repeated by post war historians. For example Geoffrey
Jukes stated that the II SS Panzer Korps, after their heavy losses at Prokhorovka,
only had ‘little more than 350 tanks in operation’. The Corps only started the
battle with 352![14]

Once the Second
Front opened up in Normandy, It is the stuff of legend that, despite there
being only 3 Tiger battalions in this theatre, allied tankers saw them
everywhere. And they respected them:

How does a
Churchill get a Tiger?

It’s supposed to
get within 2 hundred yards and put a shot through the periscope.

As is well known,
the only way to take out a Tiger in Normandy was with greater numbers and through
manoeuvre. The Firefly in the troop would keep the Tiger busy whilst the
Shermans jockeyed around to its flanks. But pretty soon the antidote was worked
out by the Tiger crews – never work alone! A second Tiger, or even an assault
gun, would lie silent on the flank, so that the flanking Shermans were themselves
destroyed by flanking shots.[16]
Ultimately, most Tigers in Normandy fell prey to air attack, naval bombardment,
or elaborate and lengthy to organise long range, massed Anti-Tank salvoes. The
Tiger proved not just a superb aggressor, but a strategically significant
defensive weapon too! The French also valued
the Tiger – an abandoned Tiger 1 they captured was re-crewed and fought by the
6th Cuirassier Regiment all the way to Germany – hardly worth the
logistic strain of a one-off foreign AFV unless it has combat characteristics
you value!

Let’s remind ourselves of our two key
questions; was the Tiger a waste of resources? is it historically justifiable to
have them appear in your wargames regularly? I think we can see that plenty of
people in a better position to judge than your average cynical grognard have
confirmed the Tiger was both a strategic weapon system that fully justified its
production. Clearly it regularly featured at the ‘point of decision’ as planned
by Guderian, or at the crisis point, to shore up the front, contrary to
planning! So the bottom line is – if your wargame represents a side show, then
keep the Tigers caged. But if you prefer to think of your game as representing either
a decisive action, or a crisis at the front – and who doesn’t! - then slap
those Tiger models down with confidence!

Great to see such a well rehearsed and coherent argument in the defence of one of a wargamers most favoured toys. I think it's highly unlikely that any naysayers will take the time or effort to counter this. Well done!

A very interesting read. Made me consider the almost unconscious hidden admiration I conceal for this destructive beast of the WWII battlefield. I remember one particular Christmas as a very young kid making a air fix kit of a Mark I with my older brother. During those holidays an almost mystical fixation was born. There were undoubtably better tanks during the war and arguably more ascetically pleasing designs but it will always be my icon of a tank embodying true raw brute power... Sorry ramble ended. Thanks for the article; very informative and enjoyable.

Well said Sparker. I go out of my way to find historical engagements which Tigers participated in, and there really are an astonishing number, including Tiger IIs on the western front. What there aren't, are loads of Tigers vs US forces engagements (far more prevalent in the east and against the British/Commonwealth), which may account for some of the comments about Tigers being over-represented.

They aren't all-conquering super tanks, but it is silly to pretend they don't have a role on the tabletop. Same with Panthers.

Thanks Martin. I didn't realise the US tankers faced off against less Tigers. I suppose it makes sense, for the Normandy campaign at least, since the whole point was for the Brits and Canadians to draw the German armour onto themselves in the East of the sector whilst the US broke out to the West...

For Tigers, around 40% of all losses were attributed to the tanks own crew having to destroy the vehicle.

In Normandy, the single biggest loss factor for Panthers was destruction by crew, roughly 50% of all losses... For air attacks, around 6%. I shall check the Tiger figures for Normandy at home later, but I suspect very similar.

Of course, what we cant know is how many of those destructions by crew may have been in response to the unquantifiable effects of say an air attack or sortie. If your fuel truck is destroyed by a passing Tiffy, that causes your Panther to run out of juice, leading to you abandoning it and setting it alight... Then perhaps the effect of air attack on logistics is far greater than the actual effects of direct action on enemy armour.

Well I'm confident in Roman's research, although I may have overstated the case in interpreting his views. But at all events, I think the point here, in the context of gauging the usefulness of the Tiger, is that only a minority were taken out be allied tanks (as opposed to SP AT guns...)

Well said and I would add that if you look at the list of Panzer Aces then they are almost all tiger commanders. Also I seem to recall that they had a average Kill Death Ratio of something like 10:1, not surprising they were feared if this is correct. Furthermore, this would easily justify the potential 2:1 cost against a mark IV.

Even so this does not address the 'should they be on the gaming table' question. Your 20% of available resource is a good argument to say they are justified in being represented. Besides which I believe we want games that are fun and interesting; what is more fun and interesting than a Tiger?

In Normandy SS S-pnz 101 record 18 or 20 lost to enemy armour out of 35 losses in action. SpATs are often noted seperateky, though 10 are recorded as lost to Shermans or Fireflys. 6 are listed as lost to AT guns.

SS 102 record 8 out of 18 lost to enemy armour.

So I wouldnt write off tank versus tank losses as a minority of losses.

Ron Klages' Trail of the Tigers' lists the loss cause of every Tiger...

Well there's little doubt that some Fireflys got Tigers, including Wittmann's of course! But even if you look at the Firefly, it was also expensive and lengthy to produce, and whilst its firepower was as good as the Tiger, and had similar mobility, its armour didn't compare. But in any case you can put Firefly's down on the wargaming table to your heart's content and no-one will complain...All I'm really saying is that you should be able to do so with the Tiger as well!

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Recently retired from the Royal Navy after 22 years service in all ranks and rates from Ordinary Seaman to Lieutenant. Now an international man of mystery? (Well, mystified by the world of International Higher Education, at any rate!)